IP Select’s Global Equity Income Share Portfolio (IVPG) has been run by the Invesco Perpetual Global Equity Income Group (The Group) for over five years now. The Group represents a set of regional-specialist managers from their Henley-on-Thames offices. They aim to achieve a growing level of income return each year, with capital appreciation over the long term, through a concentrated but diversified portfolio of global equities. The trust actively uses the unique advantages of the closed-end structure to do this, including gearing, a dividend policy, which looks to smooth payouts through capital, and an active discount control policy, which has historically prevented the trust’s shares from slipping to a significant discount to NAV. A key differentiator of IP Select Trust is that it is split into four ‘share classes’, each pursuing different strategies, and each led by a different manager, but sharing the costs of the structure. Alongside the IP Select Global Equity Income shares, the others are UK Equity, Balanced Risk Allocation and Managed Liquidity. Investors in the trust can switch between the share classes on a quarterly basis. This profile focuses only on the Global Equity Income share class. IVPG’s portfolio is relatively concentrated, comprising of approximately 53 stocks. The Group management team looks to invest in high-quality companies at attractive valuations, offering appealing yields, sustainable income and capital upside. The trust continues to hold significant exposure to oil companies and banks, and an underweight to the US. This underweight to the US (particularly to technology names), has meant that despite its good longer-term track record, the trust has struggled against the benchmark YTD. Despite this, the trust has performed significantly better on a total return basis than the average global equity income investment trust or OEIC, over both five years and YTD. Overall, the portfolio currently yields 3.6% (on a gross basis), which is near a 50% premium to world equity markets. At a portfolio level the Group expects growth in earnings and dividends at a 6-7% level, held back in part by their significant energy and financials holdings, where they have relatively modest expectations of dividend growth over the short term. Shareholders have seen impressive year-on-year increases in dividend payments. The last financial year saw a total dividend of 6.7p, which was very nearly covered by earnings of 6.4p. The increase in dividends over the past five years represents a compounded annual growth rate of 14.5% per annum. At the current price, the shares yield 3.3% as of 20 September 2018.